MP imposes night curfew from 11 pm to 5 am amid Omicron threat

New Delhi: The Madhya Pradesh government on Thursday imposed a night curfew from 11 am to 5 pm across the state, amid fears of surge in cases of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19 across the country.

“After five months, the number of Covid-19 positive cases increase to 30 in a day. No case of Omicron has been reported from MP so far but we can’t take risk as positivity rate in neighbouring states is increasing. We are imposing night curfew in MP from 11 PM to 5 AM. If require, more restrictions will be invoked in MP,” chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Thursday.

With 30 fresh cases, the Covid-19 tally in Madhya Pradesh rose to 793,581 on Thursday, while the recovery count increased to 782,859 after 19 patients were discharged from hospitals, a health department official said, adding the death toll remained unchanged at 10,531.

The night curfew has been invoked over a month after the state government ended all the restrictions related to Covid 19 on November 17.

Madhya Pradesh became the second state after Gujarat to impose night curfew, even as Rajasthan is expected to decide on restrictions on Friday after a meeting of chief minister Ashok Gehlot with health officials. Madhya Pradesh has not reported any Omicron variant case so far even though 20 samples have been sent for genome sequencing.

On Thursday, 90 new cases of Omicron variant of Covid-19 were reported taking the tally to 354. Out of these, 104 patients have recovered.

As many as 33 new Omicron variant cases were reported from Tamil Nadu, which till a day ago had only one case. Karnataka reported 12 new cases, taking the state’s tally to 31 while five Omicron cases in Kerala took its tally to 29. Odisha, which had earlier reported two cases, added as many Omicron cases on Thursday. Till Thursday evening, Maharashtra has reported maximum 65 cases, followed by 64 in Delhi.

According to health experts, Omicron spreads three times faster than the Delta variant, which was responsible for the devastating second wave of Covid-19 in April-May this year, but the infection is much milder.

Health ministry officials said many of the Omicron cases in the country are either asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. Many of them have been discharged from hospitals, officials said. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday said his government was preparing an action plan for home isolation of Omicron patients, if there is surge in Covid cases, as majority of the cases are of mild infections.

Tamil Nadu health minister Ma Subramanian confirmed that 33 Omicron cases were reported from the state on Thursday while genome sequencing results of another 23 samples were awaited. Tamil Nadu had reported its first Omicron case on December 15, when a person travelling from Nigeria tested positive for the variant.

“We took up contact tracing and tested all his family members and contacts,” Subramanian said, adding that they traced more than 4,000 people. Of those, 91 people tested positive for Covid-19 and 57 of them predominantly those who had returned from ‘at risk’ countries, in the state had shown an ‘S-gene drop’, which is a marker of probable Omicron.

“The 33 new cases and the one old case with Omicron are from those 57 samples. All of them are being treated in hospital and they are doing well. There is no reason to fear,” the minister said, adding that most of them are fully vaccinated.

Of the 34 cases, 26 patients are being treated at the King Institute in Chennai, four in Madurai, two in Tiruvannamalai and one patient in Salem. One person has been admitted in a hospital in Kerala, Subramanian said.

Karnataka on Thursday reported 12 new Omicron cases, taking its tally to 31, state health minister Dr K Sudhakar said.

“Seven of them are female, including two girls aged nine and 11 years old,” Sudhakar said, adding that 10 are from Bengaluru while one each is from Mysuru and Mangaluru.

Among the Bengaluru cases, five had recently travelled from the United Kingdom while one each had come from Denmark and Nigeria. Three other cases in Bengaluru did not have a travel history. A 27-year-old man from Mangaluru had come from Ghana, while the nine-year-old girl from Mysuru had returned from Switzerland. According to health department officials, they have been isolated and were undergoing treatment.

Kerala health minister Veena George said that five more cases of the Omicron variant detected, taking the total number of infected to 29. Four people, who reached Ernakulam, and a native of Kozhikode district have been detected with the variant. Two persons, aged 28 and 24 who arrived from the United Kingdom, a 35-year-old person who came from Albania and another one from Nigeria were among those found infected in Ernakulam, George said in a statement.

The man who was found infected in Kozhikode was the one who came to the state from Bengaluru airport. “Of the total infected, 17 have reached the state from high-risk countries and 10 from low-risk nations. Two persons have contracted the virus through contact,” George said, adding that all the infected were under treatment in hospitals and their contact list was being prepared. The state had detected first Omicron case on December 12 in Ernakulam district when a person who returned from the UK tested positive.

Two more cases of Omicron reported in Odisha on Thursday taking the total count to four, state health officials said. They said the government had not imposed any restrictions for Christmas and New Year celebrations except ban on entry into some popular temples such as Maa Tarini temple in Keonjhar district on December 25, December 30, January 1 and January 2.

On Thursday, Uttar Pradesh, where two Omicron cases were reported on December 18, chief minister Yogi Adityanath asked all district officials to take appropriate steps according to the latest guidelines issued by the central government to check the spread of Omicron variant.

A senior government official said that district magistrates have been empowered to impose restrictions for Christmas and New Year celebrations and enforce Covid-19 protocols.

State’s health and family welfare minister Jai Pratap Singh said hospitals including community health centres have been equipped with adequate resources, beds, ventilators, oxygen supply and medicines.

In Himachal Pradesh, too, the district magistrates have been empowered to impose restrictions in case the test positivity rate in a week increases to over 10%. At present, the test positivity rate in state in less than 1%. Issuing an advisory to all chief medical officers across the 12 districts, health department officials said, “Measures need to be taken in view of initial signs of a surge in Covid cases, as well as increased detection of the variant of concern (VoC), Omicron.”